A Campus Map Should Get Students to the Right Room

Campus maps too often stop at the building outline. If you are five minutes from a lecture, "Physics Hall" is not the answer — Room 204 is. The maps that students actually use during the term answer the room question first and treat the building as a container around it. At RouteU we have spent the last two years mapping buildings down to the room level across 2,000+ campuses, and the patterns that show up in week-one and finals-week traffic are the same patterns that determine whether a map is useful or decorative.

The shortest distance between a freshman and a passing grade is the distance between the dorm and the right room on time. A map that shows that distance, that estimates the wall-clock walk time, and that names the room by number is the only kind of campus map that survives contact with a 7:55 alarm. Open the Yale campus map or the ASU Tempe campus map and try one room-to-room comparison today — that is the test that has to pass every other day of the semester.